The Blind Eye of Statistics

Society has almost made me afraid to even broach this topic. Watson, of Watson and Crick, was recently marginalized because he suggested that there was a difference in intelligence between races. I’m not here to make any comment on his conclusions as I have no idea what sort of data (if any) he is referring to. From my own personal experience, I see no large scale variability between races as far as intelligence goes. In fact, I think it’s more or less impossible to make a statistically valid survey on a topic like this; it would be extremely difficult to isolate economic and cultural impacts from the genetic predispotition. The statistical noise from dozens of other impactors likely would swamp any real genetically induced difference.

Regardless, I would never try to do such a study. The reason goes beyond the difficulty in accomplishing it in an unbiased manner. I would not be allowed, by society, to arrive at either conclusion. There is only one answer to this question (and many others – everything is equal), and no amount of data can change that. I disagree with any “science” that is not allowed to come to the conclusion necessitated by its proper use of the scientific method. This is why sociology is pointless. They should just call themselves anthropologists and quit making believe that numbers are useful for them. Any study where the answer is assured prior to starting is not worth anyone’s time.

A few other comments:
1) His point regarding how different cultural groups evolved in different environments seems genetically valid, does it not? Perhaps the time scale for the second Out of Africa migration of humanity (what is that, 50,000 years ago or somesuch, right?) is too small for any real genetic variation. Except that it seems to be long enough for skin pigments to have differentiated in several different directions, yes? Anyway, I don’t see how that’s a racist point in and of itself.
2) This is different than his comment about blacks in the work place. That’s a racist statement. Which is probably why it’s in the article. I hope that’s not the worst thing the old guy said. Modern people love apologizing for people based on cultural influences; you can’t try to tell me that 80 year old white guys don’t have a culture which features an undercurrent of racism. The man is a product of his times. He probably thinks less of women, dislikes computers, says “please” and “thank you”, and enjoys collecting spare change too. SAT scores can be explained away by a number of other influences, I explain away Watson as being an old man. You see that picture? He’s very old. Now, he happens to look racist, but that’s besides the point.
3) So I almost have a statistics degree. If some sociologist comes to me with a data set from a study comparing any two people groups, I’m running the other way. Racism is the most crippling claim that someone can levy against someone else in America today. Data be damned, you’d be a fool to touch that. It’s too bad no one told Watson that.

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